Quote

You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Things
Stories
Appear
Become
Pages
Find
Begin
Human
Beings
Humans
Short
Real
Approach
Cautiously
Different
Writer
Insightful
Always
Story
Represent

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.
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A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.
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Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
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Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?
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To me, these kind of everyday miseries act as a fatal disqualifier. My sunniest beliefs are basically contingent on the fact that my child is not dying of cancer right now.
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You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.
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All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.
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It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.
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Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.
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If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
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- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.
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Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
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Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
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I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.
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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
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English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
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Don't confuse honours with achievement.
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